Saudi Arabia’s digital economy accounted for nearly 16% of GDP — Asharq Al-Awsat
In Saudi Arabia, the digital economy accounted for nearly 16% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2025. This estimate by the kingdom’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology was cited by Asharq Al-Awsat. The country’s National Day in 2026 coincided with the Year of Artificial Intelligence proclaimed by the authorities.
According to the ministry, the Saudi information and communications technology market was estimated at approximately $53 billion, or 199 billion Saudi riyals, in 2025. The publication notes that this figure differs from the digital economy’s contribution to GDP, as the latter includes digital activities in trade, transport, finance, healthcare and other sectors.
Digital public services
Digital transformation is one of the areas of the Saudi Vision 2030 program, which the Saudi Cabinet approved in April 2016. The country operates the Absher platform for processing documents, Najiz for judicial procedures, Nafath for access to government agency services, as well as Sehhaty in healthcare and Tawakkalna for documents and services.
The development of such services requires the integration of registries, identity verification, data protection and uninterrupted operation of systems. The National Cybersecurity Authority is the national cybersecurity body, the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority coordinates work on data and artificial intelligence, and the Digital Government Authority oversees the regulation, development and integration of digital public services.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
Investments in artificial intelligence and data centers
In May 2025, HUMAIN was launched in the country, combining data centers and cloud infrastructure with artificial intelligence models and applications. Its initiatives include the Arabic-language model Allam and the HUMAIN Chat service. AWS and HUMAIN also plan to make the Allam model available through the Amazon Bedrock platform.
In Riyadh this year, the foundation was laid for the SDAIA Hexagon Data Center, with a planned capacity of 480 MW. Microsoft said that the Saudi Arabia East data center region would become available in November 2026, while Amazon Web Services confirmed the launch of its first cloud region in Saudi Arabia in December 2026.
At the fifth LEAP conference, held in Riyadh in early September, announced investments approached $15 billion, according to the Saudi Press Agency. In particular, Al Moammar Information Systems reported a $1.2 billion investment in expanding data center capacity to 192 MW.
